1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an ink-jet ink, an ink cartridge, and an ink-jet recording method.
2. Related Art
Besides printing of business documents including characters, graphic charts, and the like performed on a recording media, such as plain paper, an ink-jet recording method has started to be used for printing performed on textiles and films, and the usage frequency thereof for various types of applications as described above has been increased. In the applications as described above, an image is required to have excellent chromogenic property and toughness (such as scratch resistance, light resistance, ozone gas resistance, and water resistance), and hence, an ink containing a pigment as a colorant has been frequently used.
Compared to an ink using a dye as a colorant, a printed media printed using a pigment ink has a high chromogenic property. The reason for this is that a pigment component is likely to be localized on the surface of a recording medium. The reason for this is that although a dye infiltrates to the inside of a recording medium, a pigment is likely to be agglomerated when a vehicle component evaporates or infiltrates in a step in which an ink is adhered to a recording medium or in a step performed thereafter. However, in the pigment ink, since the pigment functioning as a colorant is likely to be present on the surface of the recording medium, a printed media printed using the pigment ink is disadvantageously inferior in terms of scratch resistance.
Accordingly, in order to improve the scratch resistance of a printed media printed by the pigment ink, the addition of urethane resin particles to the ink has been investigated (for example, see JP-A-2006-22132, 2012-140602, 2013-35897, 2014-240451, 2011-144345, and 2015-45001).